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People who’ve encountered ghosts often express a peculiar sense of comfort within the shock, a paralysis that makes it too mesmerizing to look away.

“Sleepwalking,” the debut record from Savannah’s Casket Girls, showcases a connection to the metaphysical through the whirring strains and slow-buzz swells of Ryan Graveface’s synths paired with the alluringly ominous vocals of sisters Elsa and Phaedra Greene. The combination is transfixing: pop music draped in mourning crepe, girl-group stylings created to be sung down haunted halls. It’s as much an auditory treat for fans of lush dream-pop like School of Seven Bells and ’80s darkwave as it is for Phil Spector enthusiasts, begging to be played during the witching hour in deep forest clearings.

Immediately garnering attention from media giants like MTV, SPIN magazine and Stereogum, “Sleepwalking” already has the world acquiring a taste for the the Casket Girls’ dark Southern mythos.

Graveface, founder of Graveface Records (Black Moth Super Rainbow, The Appleseed Cast, Hospital Ships, Dreamend) and Savannah’s premier record shop had been conceptualizing the Casket Girls long before stumbling upon the Greenes singing in Chippewa Square. His Halloween project, The Marshmallow Ghosts, was built on low-end gritty guitars and fuzzy synths, inundatory tracks that weave the listener in and out of driving beats and vocoder wails and into eerie, uncomfortable squeals.

With the Casket Girls, Graveface wanted to take the pop elements of the Ghosts (one can’t help but sing along to “It Won’t Be Long,” an up-tempo track filled with murderous longings) and pay dark homage to the “bad girls” of 1960s girl groups, The Shangri-Las, by collaborating with a group of female vocalists.

“It’s stellar to have two completely different Casio projects now,” Graveface says. “I’ll keep the Ghosts Halloween’y and the Girls dark, poppy and good for the whole year.”

Graveface proposed the Casket Girls idea the day he met the Greenes.

“That’s definitely one of the many reasons I love living here,” he says. “People are so easy to talk to.”

Shortly after, the sisters, who prefer to work in their own space, began adding to instrumental tracks Graveface sent them.

“We are religious about our process,” say the sisters, who are responsible for all of “Sleepwalking”’s lyrics and vocals. “Working with Ryan has been an emergence from our cocoon. It allowed us to write bigger sounding songs because the music is so much bigger.”

The call-and-response vocals immersed in the beautifully catchy opener “Walking on a Wire” set the tone for much of the album’s imagery — an isolated narrator dangerously yet almost contentedly teetering between sleep and dream states.

Anna Chandler is a local writer, musician, co-founder of General Oglethorpe & the Panhandlers, and Savannah Stopover’s local booking manager. The MusicFile is a Savannah-based music discovery website and blog, owned by MusicFile Productions LLC, the parent company of the Savannah Stopover Music Festival. Check out more of their expert picks at themusicfile.com.